Annan, in a speech at the University of Maryland, also accused the Israeli government of imposing "condition upon condition" to block peace negotiations.

Palestinian farmers have been shot dead by extremist settlers intent on robbing them of their olive harvest and are trying to drive them off the land to which the Palestinians are entitled, Annan said Wednesday.

The tone was different at the State Department. Spokesman Richard Boucher said he did not have "any particular comment" on the biggest Israel sweep on the West Bank in months.

Responding to the slaying of five Israelis, troops stormed into Nablus, a hotbed of militants, with dozens of tanks and and armored vehicles and rounded up 30 suspected terrorists.

Boucher condemned the slaying of the Israelis and said Israel has a right to defend itself and to take action against terrorists.

At the same time, the U.S. official said Israel should be careful not to harm civilians.

McClellan said the administration would not step into internal Israeli political issues. "We recognize that there are elections upcoming in Israel, and the United States has a long policy of not getting involved in those internal, domestic discussions that are going on within Israel," he said.

Annan, who met with President George W. Bush (news - web sites) later at the White House, drew applause from students assembled in a university field house as he repeatedly criticized Israel and its policies.

The secretary-general's speech marked the 25th anniversary next week of the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's historic visit to Jerusalem that led to a peace treaty in 1979 in which Egypt recovered all the land it had lost in the 1967 Mideast war.

Annan said the United Nations (news - web sites) never would permit the destruction of Israel.

"It was to prevent such things from happening that the United Nations was founded," he said.

Terror attacks have caused Israelis to lose faith in the Palestinians' will to have peace, Annan said.

And, he said, as a result, Israelis support "draconian security measures" against the Palestinians that Annan said have pushed more than 1 million people below the poverty line.

"The Palestinians are just as firmly attached to their land as Israelis are to theirs," Annan said. But they "have lost faith in in the Israeli will to peace," he said.